Beatdapp Secures $17 Million Funding Round Plus Deals with UMG, SoundExchange, and Napster

Photo Credit: Beatdapp

Leading music industry fraud detection company Beatdapp has announced new partnerships with Napster and SoundExchange, as well as a strategic collaboration with Universal Music Group. The deals come on the heels of a $17 million funding round as the company continues to gain momentum.

Beatdapp’s recent financing will be invested in hiring senior leaders, expanding the company’s data science and technical teams, and reaching new markets, including Asia, India, and Europe.

Last year, Beatdapp achieved several key milestones, including analyzing over two trillion streams and twenty trillion data points, onboarding new clients — and, of course, its recent $17 million funding round. The addition of SoundExchange and Napster to its roster of partners further solidifies its position as a leader in fraud detection across the music industry.

“Our mission at Beatdapp is to protect the economic wellbeing of the global music streaming industry and put an end to streaming fraud. As a neutral third party, Beatdapp is the impartial provider of objective analysis that our growing roster of clients can count on to get fraud detection,” said Beatdapp co-CEOs Andrew Batey and Morgan Hayduk.

“This new funding allows us to deploy the most sophisticated fraud detection models, built on an industry leading data set, and further enhances our reach to meet growing market demand for our capabilities across all corners of the globe.”

Beatdapp’s technology has shown its effectiveness in combating streaming fraud for customers across DSPs, music labels, collection societies, creator tool services, and music distributors. The company reports a false positive rate of less than 0.001%.“We’re very pleased to welcome Larry Fichtner and Jamie King as investors and to our board. Jamie’s experience building a category defining, multi-billion dollar fraud detection business is invaluable as we grow our network of partners and take our company to the next level,” Beatdapp’s co-CEOs add.

“As the world leader in music-based entertainment, UMG is pleased to support the dynamic team at Beatdapp as we work to maximize compensation for artists and songwriters and the music that fans value the most,” said Michael Nash, Chief Digital Officer & Executive Vice President, Universal Music Group.

“While streaming has been the most significant technology advancement in music in many years, fraud fueled by a flood of uploads with no meaningful engagement, including non-artist noise content, has necessitated a more sophisticated, coordinated, proactive approach to mitigating streaming fraud, to foster a thriving music ecosystem. We must ensure we are supporting legitimate artistry, and deterring those who seek to abuse the open, global music industry.”

“Napster believes that streaming fraud is an industry-wide problem that requires an industry-wide solution to ensure that the correct royalties are reported and paid to the legitimate artists and songwriters who bring us the music we love. Napster’s view is that there should be consistency across the industry in respect of whether certain activity does or does not constitute streaming fraud,” said Matt Eccles, SVP and General Counsel, Napster.“As such, rather than continuing to address the scourge of streaming fraud using its own internal resources, Napster wanted a partner who was well respected by music rights-holders, who would deliver robust and impartial results and who would act as a deterrent to those committing streaming fraud. Beatdapp was the obvious choice. Napster has been thrilled to work with the Beatdapp team for over a year and could not be happier with the Beatdapp team’s collaborative approach and the consistent, timely, and supportable results.”